I have an area at school that I need to monitor with an IP camera. It is really hard to get a cable to.

I happen to have an old Axis IP camera that is WiFi capable, just :) it will only do 11Mbps but enough to monitor this area.

I purchased a $20 abg/n usb dongle and put it on a win7 pro work station in the next room. This is on the domain via a wired connection.

I setup the IP camera with a PSK and a fixed IP of 192.168.50.2/24

I setup the WiFi USB dongle with the PSK and fixed IP of 192.168.50.1/24

The signal strength is good. Connection is solid.

Doing this broke the wired network and it became unidentified and wouldnt communicate with anything till I reserved the IP on the DHCP server. Took it off the domain and joined it again before it was happy again.

But I still cant ping the IP camera on the ad hoc network. The network is identified as an unidentified network too.

So the workstation can now work on the domain again but the ad hoc network is dead in the water. Signal strength is good. Connection is solid.

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No I didn't bridge the Ad-hoc and wired. The only computer that needs the image is the secretary in the room close by. The images from the camera only need to get to the computer not to the wired network so thought bridging unnecessary.

An access point would cost a lot more than $20 so got the dongle because of cost. Also had trouble finding something that would talk to the old IP camera. Its only 2.4GHz a/b.

It could be a subnet issue. If both you Ad-hoc wireless and Wired connection are using the same subnet (192.168.50.0/24) in your case, the laptop wont route any traffic to through the wireless as it will be routing through the wired connection. This is a pure assumption

For this case, I would definitely get a WAP. Because its only a small requirement, just buy a TP-LINK WAP. Very cheap and cheerful products and would only cost you at most $40

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I have WiFi access points and the dongle works from the work station to them when I disconnect the wired network. I haven't tried WiFi from a laptop to the Ip camera thou. The camera works fine when connected via wired network. Might have to resort to conduit along the walls to get that to it thou. The room is tacked on between three buildings and has no ceiling space, gyprock, wooden battens, insulation, corregated tin roof and the walls gyprock clad concrete blocks. No space to run cables in the walls or cieling thats for sure.